{"id":119020,"date":"2025-05-14T15:02:41","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T23:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/14\/kirkland-ellis-really-leaning-into-its-trump-connection-during-saudi-arabia-trip\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T15:02:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T23:02:41","slug":"kirkland-ellis-really-leaning-into-its-trump-connection-during-saudi-arabia-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/14\/kirkland-ellis-really-leaning-into-its-trump-connection-during-saudi-arabia-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirkland & Ellis Really Leaning Into Its Trump Connection During Saudi Arabia Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something fundamentally unsavory to the majority of lawyerly types about selling out the rule of law. Nine Biglaw firms<\/a> struck deals with the Trump administration in order to avoid unconstitutional<\/a> Executive Orders designed to hurt the bottom line of major law firms. And there\u2019s already fallout<\/a> over the capitulation.<\/p>\n

The firms that caved to Trump signaled they\u2019re unwilling to take a legal fight to the Trump administration. Some clients <\/a>see that as weak<\/a>,\u00a0and, increasingly<\/a>, are\u00a0pulling work away<\/a>\u00a0from the firms that have deals with Trump. And there\u2019s not one, <\/a>but two <\/a>congressional probes<\/a> over the dealings. Plus,\u00a0attorneys<\/a>\u00a0are\u00a0leaving<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0firms that caved<\/a>\u00a0to Trump, hoping to get the stink of capitulation\u00a0off their resumes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But at least one of those firms is trying to make lemonade out of those self-inflicted lemons.<\/p>\n

According to reporting by <\/a>The Hill, Jon Ballis, chair at Kirkland & Ellis<\/a> (a firm eager to strike a deal <\/a>with Trump), was one of the business leaders that flew to Riyadh to have lunch with Trump and Saudi officials for a meeting reportedly focused on investment opportunities. Amongst others, there were representatives from Alcola, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, Halliburton, CitiGroup, and IBM. Ballis was the only Biglaw leader at the luncheon.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia pledged to invest $1 trillion in the US through a sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. PIF has historically looked to Latham & Watkins and A&O Shearman (firms that have also bent a knee to Donald Trump) for legal advice. Though, according to a recent report <\/a>from Roy Storm at Bloomberg Law, Kirkland is increasingly trying to compete for that work. <\/p>\n

\u2026And I guess we now know Kirkland\u2019s price for selling out the rule of law.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Kirkland & Ellis Really Leaning Into Its Trump Connection During Saudi Arabia Trip<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something fundamentally unsavory to the majority of lawyerly types about selling out the rule of law. Nine Biglaw firms<\/a> struck deals with the Trump administration in order to avoid unconstitutional<\/a> Executive Orders designed to hurt the bottom line of major law firms. And there\u2019s already fallout<\/a> over the capitulation.<\/p>\n

The firms that caved to Trump signaled they\u2019re unwilling to take a legal fight to the Trump administration. Some clients <\/a>see that as weak<\/a>,\u00a0and, increasingly<\/a>, are\u00a0pulling work away<\/a>\u00a0from the firms that have deals with Trump. And there\u2019s not one, <\/a>but two <\/a>congressional probes<\/a> over the dealings. Plus,\u00a0attorneys<\/a>\u00a0are\u00a0leaving<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0firms that caved<\/a>\u00a0to Trump, hoping to get the stink of capitulation\u00a0off their resumes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But at least one of those firms is trying to make lemonade out of those self-inflicted lemons.<\/p>\n

According to reporting by <\/a>The Hill, Jon Ballis, chair at Kirkland & Ellis<\/a> (a firm eager to strike a deal <\/a>with Trump), was one of the business leaders that flew to Riyadh to have lunch with Trump and Saudi officials for a meeting reportedly focused on investment opportunities. Amongst others, there were representatives from Alcola, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, Halliburton, CitiGroup, and IBM. Ballis was the only Biglaw leader at the luncheon.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia pledged to invest $1 trillion in the US through a sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. PIF has historically looked to Latham & Watkins and A&O Shearman (firms that have also bent a knee to Donald Trump) for legal advice. Though, according to a recent report <\/a>from Roy Storm at Bloomberg Law, Kirkland is increasingly trying to compete for that work. <\/p>\n

\u2026And I guess we now know Kirkland\u2019s price for selling out the rule of law.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Kirkland & Ellis Really Leaning Into Its Trump Connection During Saudi Arabia Trip<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something fundamentally unsavory to the majority of lawyerly types about selling out the rule of law. Nine Biglaw firms struck deals with the Trump administration in order to avoid unconstitutional Executive Orders designed to hurt the bottom line of major law firms. And there\u2019s already fallout over the capitulation. The firms that caved to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":119021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-mc9o2Z.jpeg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}